All Tomorrows

Asteromorphs (Descendants of the Spacers) .............................. 85

Second Galactic Empire ................................................................... 87

Gravital (Descendants of the Ruin Haunters) .............................. 88

Machine Invasion ............................................................................ 90

When Considering the Invasion .................................................... 92

Subjects (Many descendants of the Bug Facers) ....................... 93

The Other Machines ........................................................................ 96

The Fall of the Machines (Return of the Spacers) ...................... 98

The Post-War Galaxy ...................................................................... 100

The New Machines ......................................................................... 102

Second Contact ............................................................................... 104

Earth Rediscovered ......................................................................... 106

Return ................................................................................................ 108

All Tomorrows ................................................................................. 110

To Mars

After millennia of earthbound foreplay, Mankind’s achievements on a noteworthy level began with its political unification and the gradual colonization of Mars. While the technology to colonize this world had existed for some time, political bickering, shifting agendas and the sheer inertia of comfortable, terrestrial usurping had made this step seem more distant than it actually was.

Only when the risks clearly began to present themselves, only when Earth’s environment began to buckle under the strain of twelve billion industrialized souls, did Mankind finally take up the momentous task.

All through the decades, traveling to, and later settling on Mars had been envisioned as quick, relatively easy affairs; complicated but feasible and manageable in short term. As the push finally came to a shove, it was realized that this was not the case.

It had to go step by step. Atmospheric bombardment by genetically-tailored microbes slowly generated a breathable atmosphere in a cycle that took centuries. Later, a few cometary fragments were knocked off-course to bring forth seas, oceans; water. When the wait was finally over, remnants of Earth’s flora and fauna were introduced as specially-modified Martian remakes.

When everything was ready, people came from their crowded world. They came in one-way ships; fusion rockets and atmospheric gliders, packed to the brim with colonists, sleeping in dreams of a new beginning.

The first steps on Mars were taken not by astronauts, but by barefoot children on synthetic grass.

A lander ferries the first people to the pre-terraformed eden of Mars.

The Martian Americans

For several hundred years Mars remained as a backwater; prospering but still dim compared to the splendor of Earth, which was glowing brighter than ever before. Thanks to the relocation of environmentally demanding industries to Mars, Earth could usurp everything, without having to damage its tired biosphere. This was the Terrestrial Heyday; the climax of economic, cultural and social development on old Earth.

This, however, was not to last. Like the gradual separation of America from her Colonial mother, the governments of Mars adopted a new, Martian identity. They became the Martian Americans.

The difference between Earth and the Mars was not only political. A few generations in the lighter gravity gave the new Americans a spindly, lithe frame that would look surreal in their old home. This, combined with a certain amount of genetic engineering, took the Martians’ separation to a new level.

For a while the silent schism between the two planets was mutually accepted, and the balance of power hung in an edgy equilibrium. But the Terra-Martian standoff did not, could not last forever. With limitless resources and an energetic population, Mars was bound to take the lead.

Civil War

The Martian turnover was expected to occur in two ways; either through long-term economical gains or by a much shorter but painful armed conflict. For almost two hundred years, the former method seemed to take effect, but this gradual stretch eventually did break in a most destructive way.

Almost since its establishment, Martian culture was suffused with an explicit theme of rebellion against Earth. Songs, motion pictures and daily publications repeated these notions again and again until they became internalized. Earth was the old, ossified home that held humanity back, while Mars was new; dynamic, active and inventive. Mars was the future.

This ideology eventually reached its semi-paranoid, revolutionary apex. Roughly a thousand years from now, the nations of Mars banned all non-essential trade and travel with Earth.